Hurray, It's Christmas

Good Morning! Merry Christmas, I hope you slept well. (Remember, we're pretending....)

When I was little, we would get up early on Christmas morning and open our presents from Mom, Dad and Santa. We would get to play with our toys a bit, eat breakfast, then is was everyone back in the station wagon and an eight hour trip to the Upper Peninsula to have Christmas Night with Grandma J, Dad's brothers, Aunt S and our cousins. Mom is one of 6 kids, around 30 first and second cousins on Mom's side. Dad is the oldest of 3 with 3 cousins total on Dad's side. The overall body count was higher in Mom's family, but the cousins in the U. P. were our ages, all our cousins on Mom's side were much older. Yep, we had playmates up on the farm, making it more fun.

There was also a LOT of snow at Grandma' J's, one year there was this EXCELLENT ice slide down the hill by Grandma's house that someone built. It was very fast (it was watered down and allowed to re-freeze every night) and very fun, but really quite close to the creek (pronounce that "crick") at the bottom of the hill. I remember winding up wet more than once, and having to go inside to thaw. I also remember the pajamas, Grandma J always gave us pajamas for Christmas.

Actually, today isn't really Christmas at all for me, which is probably why I am driveling on about Christmas' past. We are postponing Christmas until Saturday, because Skeeter and his parents are with Skeeter's other grandparents today. I understand why there need to be new traditions, AM NOT DISAGREEING WITH THE RATIONAL, but it still doesn't keep this day from being lousy and weird. It was a last minute switch, so even the Christmas dinner is postponed. So what to do for the un-Christmas dinner? The only restaurant I could find open was our favorite Chinese place, bless those non-Christians. Egg roll anyone?